Paradox Artists’ Collective was launched at Herne Bay’s Beach Creative CIC in November 2018 to facilitate House X-odarap, a mixed media exhibition of visual art and the written word. Twenty artists were personally invited by curators Karen Simpson and VeronicaTonge to make works relating to ‘the house and its role as a theatrical setting for our lives’ by purposefully developing Dada and Surrealist concepts and working methods.
Dada was an angry art movement of the European avant garde, reacting to the horror of World War 1 and rejecting the logic, reasoning and aestheticism of modern capitalist society. Marcel Duchamp used the term “anti-art” around 1913 to challenge accepted definitions of art, whilst Dadaist practitioners played with nonsense and irrationality, expressing anti-middle class and materialistic values in collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing and found objects as sculpture.
Surrealism was a revolutionary cultural movement that began in the 1920s and developed out of Dada, first centered around Paris then spreading worldwide. It affected visual arts, literature, film and music as well as political practice, philosophy and social theory. Its influence has been with us ever since. Surrealist artists painted unnerving illogical scenes with photographic precision, often creating weird creatures by combining ordinary objects. Surrealist painting techniques also allowed the unconscious to express itself in an attempt to resolve the contradictory conditions of dream and reality into a sort of “super-reality”.
House X-odarap exhibition and related events will run concurrently with East Kent Artists’ Open Houses 2019 at Beach Creative galleries from Saturday 19th October to Thursday 7th November 2019.
